Sniper Elite 5 | Motor Accessibility Options

Sniper Elite 5 is a third person tactical shooter game, developed and published by Rebellion Developments. The game has a range of different settings that can potentially make it a more accessible experience for some players, and we will be looking the motor accessibility settings, such as ‘Auto Run’ and the option to switch off ‘Bullet Drop’. All footage is captured on an Xbox Series S, and we will be focussing on the console version of the game when played with a standard controller.

Controls Menu

You can access the settings via the main menu, or by pausing the game at any time during gameplay. By heading to ‘Options’, and scrolling across to ‘Controls’, you can choose one of six different controller layouts, including three that are specifically aimed at left handed players. It is not possible to remap your controller to create a custom layout.  During this video, we will be using the ‘Classic’ controls, which is the default control scheme. 

It is possible to invert the Y axis. This means that instead of pushing right stick up to look up, you can pull down on the right stick to look up, and then push it up to look down.

You can adjust the sensitivity of the right stick for general gameplay, the sensitivity when aiming down your scope, and also the ironsights sensitivity. For all of these options, you can adjust both the X and Y axis’ separately.

In this menu you can switch controller vibration on or off. By default, this is set to On. 

By default, when you go from crouching to sprinting, you will stay standing once you have stopped sprinting.  There is the option to turn this setting off, so that when you stop sprinting you would automatically go back to crouching, providing you were crouching when you started sprinting.

Accessibility Menu

Now moving across to ‘Accessibility’, we can scroll down to the Sensitivity settings, to find a range of aim assist options. The Aim Assist options decrease or increase the sensitivity of the right stick when you have an enemy in your sights. Here, with Aim Assist off, the aiming reticle is moving quickly over the enemy. However, with Aim Assist set to strong, the aiming reticle is slowing down, even with the same amount of pressure on the stick. This can help some players when trying to accurately aim and shoot at the target. There are separate settings for aiming when using the scope, over the shoulder, and using ironsights. For each of these aiming types you can set Aim Assist to off, weak, moderate and strong.

 For scoped, aim over shoulder and ironsights there is also the option to switch on Snap to Target. This option can be switched on or off for any of the three aiming types, and for all three are off by default. When switched on, holding down the aim button will cause the aiming reticle to snap directly to an enemy, providing they are in range. You can then snap the aiming reticle across to other in-range enemies by moving the right stick in their direction. If you or the enemy moves out of range, Snap to Aim will stop working.

By default, you have to hold down LB or L1 to open the radial menu, and then move the right stick to select different items and weapons. It is possible to set this to toggle, so a press or L1 or LB will open the menu, and then another single press of the button will close it.

Using the default controls, you hold down the LT or L2 button to aim down sights. By setting this to toggle, you can press the button once to begin aiming, and press it again to stop aiming.

The Auto Run option means that, instead of pushing left stick forwards to move forwards, you can just tap A or Cross to begin jogging straight ahead. You can then use the right stick to steer the character, meaning that if using both sticks together is difficult, you may be able to play with a single stick. Tapping A or Cross again will stop you from running. Pressing B or Circle will cause you to crouch, and you can move forwards slowly this way. Holding B or Circle will make you go prone, and you can crawl forwards by tapping the A or Cross button. This setting ay be helpful for those who find it difficult to access two analogue sticks at the same time.  

It is worth noting that when using custom controls, Left Stick Click is still required to sprint. When using both sticks, it is possible to move whilst aiming by moving the left stick. When using auto run without the left stick, you are not able to move around whilst aiming, as pressing A when aiming changes your aiming type.

Campaign Difficulty

There are multiple difficulty options with the game, with the potential to customise the difficulty to suit your skills and playstyle. You can access the Difficulty menu via the main menu or by pausing the game at any time. The Overall Difficulty allows you to change the difficulty for the overall game all at once, where there are also individual settings for Combat, Sniping and Tactical. You could, for example, have Combat set to a lower difficulty but Sniping set to a higher difficulty if that is your preference.

Combat Difficulty Settings

To customise the difficulty further, you can go into the Advanced Difficulty settings. From here you can set the difficulty for Combat to be anything from very easy to authentic, or you can adjust individual settings within this overall preset to create a custom difficulty specifically for Combat.

You can set how fast you would like your health to regenerate, and also how much health you would like to have after you have been revived by another player. There are settings to determine how much ammo and equipment you are likely to find when searching, a setting to determine whether or not you will automatically swap to another weapon when you run out of ammo, and the option to throw away remaining ammo in the clip when you reload, for more realistic ammo management. 

There are separate settings to determine how much damage you can take, and how much damage enemies can take. There are separate settings to change how aggressive, accurate, intelligent and skilled at sniping enemies are. There is a setting to change how perceptive enemies are as well, which will change how likely they are to see or hear you and another to change how quickly they spot and respond to you. There are settings that determine if damage will force you out of Empty Lung or Focus modes, and the option to switch Focus mode off entirely if you prefer. 

Sniping Difficulty Settings

Within the Sniping difficulty options, you can switch bullet drop to be on or off, which means that you can decide whether or not long-range shots will be affected by gravity.

Active reloading is when you press the reload buttons for a second time within a specific window to reload faster. There are options to increase or reduce the amount of time allowed for active reloading.

There is the option to switch off whether or not the wind will affect the flight path of the bullet.

Some players may find that having both of these settings switched on at the same time will be helpful, as your bullet will hit whatever the aiming reticle is pointing at, regardless of distance.

When aiming down the sniper scope, the player has the option to ‘empty lung’, which zooms in further, slows down time and displays a marker for where the shot will hit. This can be especially helpful when accounting for bullet drop over a long distance. There is the option have the assist set to standard, reduce the amount of time it is enabled for, or to switch it off entirely. 

Tactical Difficulty Settings

Within the Tactical difficulty options there is the option to change how much information is provided by the HUD, such as how much ammunition you are carrying and your current health level.

There is also the option to change how much information is provided by the radar.

You can change how long tagged enemies remain tagged, which can be helpful when you are trying play stealthily or when in combat.

The Defusal Radius option controls how large the region for defusing an explosive is, so you may not need to be as precise with your controls or get quite as close to defuse it.

As well as the campaign, there are also some other gameplay modes, including the Shooting Range, which could be a good place to practice the controls.

We hope that this video has been helpful. If you have any questions about motor accessibility in video games, then please contact SpecialEffect.

 For game developers who are interested in more video examples of how developers have improved the motor accessibility of their games for players, please visit the SpecialEffect DevKit at specialeffectdevkit.info.